Expanding Your Social Network

Life isn’t all about the job, after all. Eventually you’ll need friends, if for no other reason than to keep that social meter nice and high. Plus, having friends can lead to additional Opportunities for more money. This is actually Holly’s actually job: to be the stay-at-home wife and mingle to increase the family’s status.

Note: Unlike previous games in the franchise, you no longer need family friends to get promoted.

Right now, the family still needs money, so she’s continuing her part-time job at the bookstore. In the meantime, however, she’s trying to make a few friends. In the old games, this process was kicked off by a welcoming party, a small group of neighbors who would greet you when you moved in. This is no longer guaranteed to happen—it didn’t for the poor Schultzes, so to meet their first friends, she needs to hit the town.

Anyone Holly runs into can be a potential friend. When Holly went to the library, for example, she met Molly French. Any interaction at all will get you the other person’s phone number. The next day, Holly took the logical step: she selected the phone, picked “Call Sim…” from the pie menu, then selected “Chat.” You could use “Invite Over” to offer them to pop over for a visit, or “Invite Out” for a friendly gathering at a community lot, but Sims may decline those if their relationship is too low. Right now, they barely know each other, so Holly is choosing to Chat, because it’s never rejected.

Holly and Molly chatted about… well, about whatever women chat about, something I probably don’t want to know the details of. Looks like shoes, according to the screenshot. Anyway, it takes awhile before a Sim will agree to come over. You’ll want to actually invite them out to a public place for a day or two and get to know them properly there. After that, then you can make an invite over. We’ll fast-forward a couple days here, when Molly decides she actually does want to come over.

After Molly accepts the invitation, Holly checks to make sure she doesn’t have an active debuff that could hurt the social progress. She notices that the trash can is overflowing and smelly, so she takes it out. That would have made for a terrible first impression!

Now, Holly is a bit hungry, but for a social gathering this is actually a good situation. When guests arrive to your home, they will always be a bit peckish, and as previously mentioned, relationships move very well when Sims chat while they eat.

Holly greets Molly when she arrives, then uses the Invite Inside command. Then, Holly serves up a plate of pancakes to break the ice. Once the meal is done, she chats with Molly and try to gauge what she enjoys doing. In fact, one of the best actions she can do early is Friendly… > Get To Know, as this can help you quickly figure out the target’s five traits. Holly has it a bit earlier due to her Friendly trait, but all Sims can use the command eventually.

It will take a long time before Holly totally figures Molly out, but once she’s got it, she’ll be able to exploit Molly’s traits for maximum social gain. For example, if Molly winds up having the Loves the Outdoors trait, Holly will focus her social efforts during outdoor activities.

That said, you should never sacrifice your own Sim’s happiness just to make a friend. That sounds incredibly selfish, but it’s pragmatic: for example, if you’re playing a Good Sim, and you see another Sim is an Evil Sim, it will be almost impossible to get them to be friends, just because they’ll act against each other. If two Sims have mutually exclusive traits, it’s best to just move on and try to befriend someone else. Even if you did manage to make the friend, you probably wouldn’t be able to hold onto him or her for very long. Some Sims simply aren’t meant to be together.

Unlike the previous games of the series, there is yet another option to get some one-on-one time with a friend. You can now visit others’ houses! In Map View, you can filter the tags by your friends’ houses, but you can still go to anyone’s house on a whim, whether they’re tagged or not.

Watch your cursor as you hover over houses: if the icon turns into a hollow house outline, no one lives there, and ringing the bell will be a waste of time. If the house icon is solid, then someone at least lives there: click the house then, and the pie menu will display a “Visit the [family] household” option. If it’s grayed out, that Sim family isn’t home. If the option is actually there, then you can ring their bell and hope to start a relationship. Here you can see Holly heading across the street to visit the Sekemoto household.

When you’re invited into someone else’s house, remember that you need to be on your best behavior to make a friend. You don’t own the place: don’t open the fridge, don’t sleep in their bed, don’t take a shower… Don’t do anything you wouldn’t want that Sim to do in your own home. Well, I take that back: if your Sim has the Inappropriate trait, they will actually get a kick out of doing that stuff, but the other person still won’t like it.